Rachel Maddow Sums Up Atlas Shrugged

Posted by khalling 10 years, 2 months ago to Philosophy
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An older article brought to my attention by the Gulch's Fuguewriter. I am interested in makers you have met who, although not a Rearden or a Galt, impressed you as Pat Logan impressed Dagny.


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  • Posted by plusaf 10 years, 1 month ago
    Duck, everyone... I posted the link to this page on RM's FB page....
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  • Posted by Bobhummel 10 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    Rachel Maddow is a real life Bertram Scudder. I look forward to her just demise at her own hand, rather at her own mouth.
    Cheers
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  • Posted by jpellone 10 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    You are right... Maybe it has to do more with management and the employee working environment but the people have to have it within themselves to excel...
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 1 month ago
    The Maddow quote is so far from AS I don't feel the need to explain why. Everyone here knows why Maddow is wrong in that quote.

    I would also add we don't know if Pat Logan was a productive genius. Maybe he liked something obscure, like fixing up old trains for the fun of it. It wasn't trying to get rich or anything, but people in the world of fixing up old trains for hobby purposes recognized him as an undisputed leader at it. So he was living his dreams and making train hobbyist happy. Maybe, like the architect in Fountainhead, some young man was feeling like turning to suicide or drug addiction, but found an outlet learning about trains from Logan. If all that stuff I made up were true, then Logan could be living the dream of AS every bit as much as a Rearden or Galt. The book never says your dream has to be to run a for-profit enterprise.
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  • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    We had a similar experience at a local KFC. when you walked through the door everyone working behind the counter and someone who was working furiously on cleaning the entrance door all made eye contact and said hi. and we got our food very fast. they were always cleaning and asking if you wanted something. spotless friendly and quick. turns out it was the manager we later found out cleaning the entrance door.
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  • Posted by jpellone 10 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree that evaluating success should not be just in a high position in a corporation. They all (or at least most) had to work their way up to that position...
    I once went into a KFC for lunch and placed my order as I normally do and the gentleman that took my order was very happy and appeared happy to see me. As I watched him get my lunch together I was noticing how fast and sure he was moving, never losing his terrific smile. I think that was the fastest I ever got my meal from that KFC. After we sat down to eat and there were no customers at the counter, he came out to the floor and started cleaning everything. He was working a mile a minute but never lost his great smile. He even came by my table twice asking if we needed any refills or anything else. I was so impressed by his motivation and positive attitude that I yelled to the manager, "This man needs a raise!" He then tells me that he was at the max pay for his position. So I then yelled to the manager "He needs a promotion!" A couple weeks later he was gone and I found out that they had sent him to managerial school. I was so happy and I know that this mid 20's gentleman will go far in his life as long as he keeps his spark burning!!!
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  • Posted by MikeJoyous 10 years, 1 month ago
    Maddow wrote an interpretation of Atlas that was in line with her own worldview. She did not try to understand the novel. From her point of view, Rand was against empowering the government to give to the poor. So that meant she must be for the rich against the poor.
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  • Posted by Notperfect 10 years, 1 month ago
    I know 2 gentlemen who come to mind. I know not if they have visited the sight although I have invited them both. I have listened and learned from them both that not only do you have to find that edge that will propel themselves to the next level in their conquests, but they also have their peripheral vision on incoming attacks by those who want to keep them at bay. You may not know them, but there are a few still left.
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  • Posted by NealS 10 years, 1 month ago
    A second thought on Rachel's attempt to demean Ayn's writing of Atlas Shrugged. Rachel's report summarized, "In Ayn Rand’s novel, she leads her readers to see the wealthiest people as heroes, heroes that must be protected. . . . The rich are heroes and everybody else is a taker. The more the rich have, the better. The better for everyone. That is not fiscal conservatism either. It is something else."

    It's extremely obvious to me that Rachel never read it, her prejudices got in the way of telling the truth, and/or she is an outright liar. Now give this some thought. Which do you think would better promote or demote Ayn's book, Rachel's review above or mine below?

    "The sex in Ayn's writing of Atlas Shrugged was outstanding, subdued and realistic, yet imaginative, but still outstanding. And to imagine that she wrote it in the 1950's. I can still imagine in my mind some of the spicy scenes. Very hot and stimulating."

    This is a fact of life as we know it today, sex works. I would think there would be a lot more of the other side reading Atlas Shrugged from my review as opposed to Rachel Maddow's. This thought was triggered by my previous post idea of misrepresentation and/or just plain outright lying to promote your beliefs and just plain prejudices. Do whatever it takes to get the votes, just find the right key, one that won't come back to haunt you. Each reader can then determine on their own which side of the equation, which characters, they associate with.

    Honestly, I actually did think that Dagny was hot and very sexy and I read AS the first time in about 1960 or so. I read it because my parents were so Republican. My last reading was just a couple years ago. I also remember a book, "Peyton Place" from the mid 50's, it was huge, 60,000 copies in fist ten days and remained on best seller list for 59 week, and you could get it in a plain brown wrapper.

    The Republican Party, the Tea Party, or any opposition to what we are experiencing today needs to learn from these examples that there are specific keys to making the other side get interested in learning more about their opposition. And this needs be done, "unwittingly" (another lie) of course.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 1 month ago
    2nd comment & specific Thanks, KH: the people who give us competent personal service, whether in the hospital or at Arby's drive-through, are often Pat Logans. I confuse people by tipping restaurant wait staff heavily and thanking the folks at the hardware store profusely -- but it's the Pat Logan effect: they, like the nurse at my doctor's office the other day, make life possible. I told the RN, "If it weren't for nurses, we'd all be dead." No joke!
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  • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 1 month ago
    "This is, to put it bluntly, a totally inaccurate description of Atlas Shrugged and of Rand’s view." At best, incomplete. As others have pointed out here: not all who are rich, came by their riches honestly, either in the novel or in the life we know. And not all of modest means desire to "take" rather than trade.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 1 month ago
    my favorite Pat Logan was the young crop duster Collett Everman Woolman, who in 1925 started a tiny air mail service. by his personal example, Delta Airlines grew up around him, and when he retired, it took 13 people to replace him.
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  • Posted by NealS 10 years, 1 month ago
    The real issue is that Rachel Maddow viewers don't need to think for themselves. Why should they, they've got Rachel Maddow and Chris Mathews, and others like them, to do it for them?

    Rachel Maddow, like most others of her political persuasion don't have actually read a novel or anything else to criticize and demean it because they are not responsible for lying or misrepresenting anything they say. Nancy Pelosi taught us all that, teaching us we can pass laws without actually reading them.

    What hurts me is when someone I thought to be an intelligent person makes completely false statements, anything to promote their personal prejudices, and sticks to it no matter what facts face them. But then again, this is what they learned to do.

    I guess if our President can lie, and I assume he does it because he knows a certain part of the population will believe anything he says true or not. Those that don't believe him, he could care less about, just call them racists. It's like the increase in oral sex among children after Bill Clinton's "didn't have sexual relations with that woman" was exposed. The children learned from what they saw and heard, that it's okay to tell lies, as nothing will happen, and it's okay to have oral sex with acquaintances (classmates). So they experimented with it.

    What can the opposition do to equal the lying tactics? Obviously telling lies will backfire or just result in being called a racist. We do however, need to find a key in persuading people to look at and think about the facts.

    Rachel M. like Jane F. (from Viet Nam era) I personally consider treasonous. What they are doing or did, is not good for the country? The problem, there will be no real consequences.
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  • Posted by wiggys 10 years, 1 month ago
    rm is an idiot. why anyone would listen to her is beyond me. why anyone would give her audience here is out of line.
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  • Posted by 10 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    I think you have missed the point of the article, Did you read it? which was written by someone at the Ayn Rand Institute. RM's comments are not unlike many comments you hear from people who have not read AS. I think the point of the article was to point out Rand's story was not one dimensional and my point in posting the article HERE was to have a discussion about people you have met or worked with that remind you of Pat Logan, the train engineer, Dagny respected.
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  • Posted by jimjamesjames 10 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    I believe it was Henri Poincare who said, "It is not the purpose of work to earn your next meal. It is the purpose of work to keep from being bored between meals" Some do pottery, some run corporations, both are equal in my one good eye if their time is spent productively and honestly.
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  • Posted by Susannah 10 years, 1 month ago
    I think of all the great teachers I had in my school days. They certainly were not rich, but they were, indeed, producers. Among my class of graduates there are family doctors, surgeons, military officers, lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers ... practically every profession you can name. None of them would be where they are today without those dedicated teachers who had high standards and accepted no excuses from us. Wish education today were as rigidly academic.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 1 month ago
    I have never met a true leftist who could understand anything A.R. has written, especially Atlas. It's as if they filter everything through a distortion lens which makes their conclusions fit a pre-determined pattern, and no matter how you try, you can never get them to unscrew their convoluted view.
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  • Posted by RonC 10 years, 1 month ago
    Rachel is not mature enough to appreciate AS. All of the people I know that truly understand AS have read it several times. To the immature that alone is beyond understanding. There are rich and powerful people in AS, most of them are takers. The heroine is also rich. The difference between Dagny and her brother is not money, it is the solving problems in such a way that "unintended consequences" are minimal and the sum of the solution's parts is greater than the individual tally, or what we call "productivity." All of the key producer's in the book had a different vision of the world and their place in it than the government and society as shaped by the government. That different vision is important because if everyone liked the same thing, there would only be 1 thing. This is why central committee, top down, government can't provide the wealth and diversity of ideas that capitalism does.

    I'm not certain anyone will ever know all of the nuances Rand built into the context of her writing. If there were an audio book of her reading the script that would be revealing as well. We can only imagine the inflection she would use, and that communicates as much or more than her words. Even if we knew all the Rand intended, Rachel would never get it. It perfectly normal for her and her government to tell us how to live. Even if she were bluntly told how the world works she would shut the door to her mind. Maddow and her ilk have great disdain for any ideas that are contrary to their world view of sheople, brother's keepers, and wealth redistribution.
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